Early Wednesday morning, the Charlotte Fire Department responded to a major apartment fire in southeast Charlotte that left four people injured and required the rescue of multiple residents. According to WBTV, emergency services were called to the Rise Blue Ridge apartments on Wallace Road around 3 a.m., where firefighters found flames coming from the second and third floors, leading to the deployment of additional units as the situation escalated to a second alarm.
Within about 50 minutes, the efforts of around sixty firefighters brought the blaze under control. During the incident, four people were injured, with two suffering serious injuries and two others with non-life-threatening injuries, as confirmed by WCNC Charlotte. No firefighters were injured while responding to this incident, which is part of multiple fires the Charlotte Fire Department attended in about 24 hours. This included an earlier residential fire in south Charlotte that resulted in a firefighter being hospitalized after a ceiling collapse and a fire at Calvary Church on Pineville-Matthews Road.
While investigators have not yet determined the cause of the apartment fire, Battalion Chief John Lipcsak provided a caution to the community. "We always caution people on their heating sources that they’re using, and if they’re using alternative heating sources, make sure they’re keeping blankets and curtains and things like that away from whatever they’re using for heating," Lipcsak explained in a statement obtained by WSOC-TV.
